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Republicans Can Only Blame Themselves For Far-Right Hatred In Their Party

January 22, 2016

The column by E.J. Dionne today says everything that this blog over time has made perfectly clear. The bile and hate that has flowed hot and heavy from the conservative right-wing of the Republican Party was a monster that was not only created but strongly encouraged by the party. Now the GOP have a force in Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who are destroying the party itself.

After Obama won, the main goal of Republican leaders of all stripes was to take back Congress as a prelude to defeating the president in 2012. The angry grass-roots right — it has been there for decades but cleverly rebranded itself as the tea party in 2009 — would be central in driving the midterm voters the GOP would need to the polls. Since no one was better at rousing them than Palin, old-line Republican leaders embraced and legitimized her even if they snickered privately about who she was and how she said things.”

“Today’s Republican crisis was thus engineered by the party leadership’s step-by-step capitulation to a politics of unreason, a policy of silence toward the most extreme and wild charges against Obama, and a lifting up of resentment and anger over policy and ideas as the party’s lodestars.

When writing this post I was thinking of how the Tea Party launched into John McCain at a town hall meeting and then how one of the smartest men in the senate, Dick Lugar, was thrown out in a primary as he had a desire to work with the other side to make government function..

Does anyone really believe that the word “hate” really has any meaning anymore when used by a liberal? I’m not trying to be snarky, either, its just that not every utterance or iteration of disagreement with the president or with culture or policy can be “hate.” Didn’t the left once tell us that protest or opposition was the highest form of patriotism while they were savaging Bush?

EJ Dionne really misses the mark. Its pretty clear that he really doesn’t know any conservatives or former tea-party members. His lazy use of language is rather sad, too. I suppose any writer for Salon would be great at the Wa. Po.